The United States of Rachel Berry
by bloemhoffan3000
Summary: For Rachel, having multiple personalities wasn't a big deal. Sure, sometimes she wasn't exactly herself. Because sometimes, she was Puck. Or Finn. Or Sam. But a chance encounter with an old friend, will have her discovering there is an even weirder reality than living with Disassociative Identity Disorder.
1. 1 Prologue

**Title:**** The United States of Rachel Berry**

**Summary:**For Rachel, having multiple personalities wasn't a big deal. Sure, sometimes she wasn't exactly herself. Because sometimes, she was Puck. Or Finn. Or Sam. But a chance encounter with an old friend, will have her discovering there is an even weirder reality than living with Disassociative Identity Disorder.

**Disclaimer:**Neither **Glee** nor **United States of Tara** are mine. As if. Also, largely inspired by _This Same Rain That Draws Me Near_ by **Dramatricks**, which is an awesome story that everyone should read!

**Author's Note:**This follows a somewhat altered Season 4, obviously. Thoughts are in _italics_. Please enjoy, and don't forget to review!

**1. PROLOGUE:**

**In which we meet Rachel, and Santana has an eventful luncheon.**

Rachel Berry looked up at the sound of the front door slamming shut, and rapid footsteps thundering on their way to her bedroom. She cocked her head when she heard her roommate's frantic calls. _This couldn't be good_, she thought to herself.

"Rachel!" Santana Lopez yelled, closer to her room now. "Damn it, Hobbit, where the hell are you?"

She rolled her eyes in exasperation at the typically childish nickname. "Honestly, S," Rachel replied, stepping out of her room and colliding with a panting Santana in her doorway. "Where else would I be?" The question is asked lightly, but Rachel can sense the underlying bitterness, and braces herself in preparation. Santana is an expert at calling her out on her **bullcrap**, as the latina so elegantly puts it.

Her defensiveness is unnecessary though, she finds. The other girl is simply staring back at her, eyes wide and unblinking. Rachel frowned, confusion and worry clear on her face.

"Santana, what's wrong?" she asks, even as she is pulling the unresisting girl into her room, and over to the bed. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

The ex-cheerleader was pale and trembling, causing a shiver to go down Rachel's spine. Santana was many things, but easily spooked was not one of them. For her to be this affected, whatever it is must be huge.

Rachel scooted closer, grabbing ahold of Santana's hands in concern. _Please_, she begs silently, mind racing with the possibilities. Her dads, Santana's parents, Britt. While the list of people she fears for might be short, they themselves are absolutely vital to Rachel's survival. "I can't lose them," she blurts out desperately.

This seemed to finally snap Santana out of her stupor.

She blinked a few times, turning her head to take in her surroundings. They were in Rachel's room, on the bed covered in sheet music, as always. She absently fingered a few loose papers before Rachel's impatient tugging on her hands brought her focus back to reality. This was not going to be an easy conversation, she knew. _Well, here goes nothing._

"I owe you an apology," Santana began, clearing her throat and steadfastly avoiding Rachel's gaze. "I, um," she shrugged, before sucking in a deep breath, and then noisily exhaling it. "I didn't really believe that whole multiple personalities thing, you know. I mean, this is New York, and crazy is everywhere, and if all I had to worry about was you hitting on me a few times a month, that was okay."

She could tell Rachel was confused, and she couldn't really blame her. She had probably scared the little runt. "Hey, you okay?" she asked quickly, having just noticed the trace of unshed tears in chocolate eyes. "Why're you crying?"

Rachel stared at Santana, somewhat surprised by how much her admission hurt. "You didn't believe me?" she finally whispered, letting go of her hands as she'd been burned. "After everything in highschool, all those times..." she trailed off, shaking her head in disbelief. It was like she was seeing Santana for the first time, only her best friend was a complete stranger.

"Come on, who believes that kinda shit exists," Santana defended herself, trying to grab for Rachel's hands. "For real, though? I'm sorry, okay, I should have," she grunted, frustrated by the other girl's evasion tactics.

"So, what changed your mind?" Rachel asked, still pulling away from her roommate. "Obviously the collection of men's clothes in my closet wasn't enough."

Honestly? No, it hadn't been. So what if sometimes Rachel wore men's football jerseys, and reeked of too much Axe body-spray? Or pulled tight muscle-tees over an obviously female torso, while obnoxiously flexing her 'guns' in Santana's face on occassion. Or had a wholly annoying Justin Bieber obsession at times, she shuddered at the memory. Rachel was an actress, after all; or studying to be one, anyway.

"Ever heard of role-play?" Santana offered, shrugging her shoulders. "Plus, I was in major denial back in highschool, as you very well know. I didn't want to believe any of it could be tue."

Rachel only shook her head sadly. While she had gotten used to the general disbelief and dismissal of her condition by now, she couldn't help feeling disappointed in her friend. "I thought we were friends, S."

The two of them had met up in New York after graduating highschool. Rachel had left Lima, Ohio, and it's suffocating atmosphere far behind, following her dreams of Broadway to the prestigious New York Academy of the Dramatic Arts. Santana had dropped out of college in Louisville, Kentucky, where her cheerleading prowess won her a full-ride scholarship. In the City That Never Sleeps, sharing a loft apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, they became best friends. The 'alters' had made Santana's life a little hellish in the beginning, but really, they were all boys, so her _charm_ (and penchant for strutting around the loft in tiny bikinis) won them over in the end. It hurt to hear now that her acceptance had all been a lie.

Santana had known about Rachel's condition through the rumour-mill in highschool, of course. Everyone had known about the Berry Freak back home in Lima. When they first moved in together, Rachel had naively thought Santana's lack of reaction to it meant something else, though. But it hadn't, she realized now. Santana, even after living with her and Sam and Finn and Puck for months, still didn't believe her, didn't accept the truth of her disorder. She had been pretending all along, indulging Rachel's fantasies like she was a child with an array of colourful imaginary friends. Like they weren't **real** at all.

Rachel quickly shuffled out of her room, making her way into their tiny kitchen. She reached into a cabinet, searching for her special water glass; the one with the stars on it that she'd gotten from her mother for her last birthday. She groaned in frustration when she couldn't reach it, knowing Puck had put it further into the cabinet to mess with her. Sam was generally the sweeter of her alternate personalities, and Finn would never be so deliberately annoying.

"Here," Santana said, having pulled their handy step-stool closer. She immediately turned around at Rachel's huff, taking a seat at the dining table instead.

"Look, I know it's hard for you to listen to me right now, but you need to hear the rest, Rach." Santana listened carefully as Rachel filled her glass with water, waiting for her to acknowledge her presence.

"I don't want to hear anything else you could possibly have to say," came the harsh reply a few seconds later. Rachel quickly refilled the water glass. She was _thirsty_, nothing else, she thought, hoping to convince herself (and her other selves).

"I know," Santana said, sounding unsure yet determined. "But don't you wanna know why I finally **do** believe you?" she queried, still not looking in the other brunette's direction. Striving for a casualness she didn't feel, she continued. "I had a lunch-date with Lauren today, remember?" She heard Rachel sigh, and took that as her cue to carry on. "Right, so she has a new man in her life, and I was teasing her about him, as I do," she added, waiting for Rachel to scoff or something, like she normally would.

Nothing.

_Well, okay then_. "Next thing, she whips out her phone to prove he's real or whatever. But then the dude showed up to like, surprise her or something, and it was **him**, Rachel! Lauren's new boyfriend?" she stated in awe. "It was **Puck**. _Your_ Puck."

Still nothing. No reaction, no gasp of surprise, no scoff of disbelief.

Slowly, Santana turned around to face the strange girl she called her best friend. Only, she wasn't there anymore.

"Oh, crap."

The smirk was both mocking and familiar. "No shit, Sherlock."


	2. 2 First and foremost

**Title:**** The United States of Rachel Berry**

**Disclaimer:**** Glee **is not mine. But this version of its characters are. So really, who cares?

**2. FIRST AND FOREMOST**

**this isn't me. **

The first time that Rachel remembers actually _being_ someone else, she was six years old. She thinks she's probably been _someone else_ before then, but six is when she remembers the first time it happened.

It had been a Thursday, and she had been at the park, playing by herself (as usual) while her daddy LeRoy read his book on the bench close by. A boy, bigger than her (but then, even kids _her own age_ were always bigger than little Rachel Berry) had wandered over, and was staring at her.

She didn't mind the audience, having finally perfected her rendition of 'My Man' and was busy practicing it to perform for her daddies that Sunday afternoon. The boy had stood right in front of her, eerily silent and **staring**, until he'd started _laughing_. His giggles and guffaws grew louder and louder, forcing young Rachel to stop and scowl at him instead. Appreciative (and silent) awe was one thing, but laughing was quite another matter. Once he saw he had her attention, the boy abruptly stopped laughing, sneering at her instead. And it was clear, even before he spoke, that he'd meant to laugh **at** her, and her singing, and there wasn't anything _appreciative_ or _awestruck_ about that.

"My mom says you're dads are evil fags, and they're gonna burn in hell," he said in his little kid voice, meanness shining through. He was staring intently into her eyes. When she didn't say anything in reply, he leaned in even closer. "They're gonna take you with 'em, I bet. You're gonna burn until your crispy, huh?"

Rachel hadn't been scared or intimidated as she figured she was supposed to be; it was just a little boy parroting his parents' idiotic attitude, after all. As unfair as it was, the little six-year-old was used to it. So she merely huffed in irritation that he felt the need to interrupt her singing for that drivel. Honestly, she feared for her generation.

"You know what else?" he blurted out, clearly caught off guard by her dismissal, causing Rachel to huff again. "That song's stupid too, cos you're never gonna get a man. Nobody's ever gonna marry you, cos nobody's ever gonna love you. Nobody," he hissed, searching her eyes again.

Obviously, he'd hoped she would cry. Unfortunately, what he got was something - some_one_ - entirely different. That was the first of many bloody noses Rachel would become responsible for.

Puck, as he prefered to introduce himself, didn't take any shit from anyone. He liked girls **a whole lot**, especially older women, and had no compunctions about going after those he wanted, whether they were already in relationships (or marriages) with other people or not. Puck was the reason Rachel knew sleazy pick-up lines and how to expertly roll a blunt, and in fact where to score the best weed for those blunts. Puck was the cause of most of the fights (and drunken brawls) Rachel got into in highschool, when she'd been a self-declared **badass**; or rather, Puck had been the badass. To her, he'd just been Puck. To everyone else, he was proof that she was a freak.

According to the typically small-minded Lima, her homosexual fathers had infected her with their perversion. How else did you explain a girl, raised by two men, who went around calling herself a teenage boy?

Naturally, she had done her research on the topic of multiple personalities. Rachel Berry was nothing if not extremely organised. She loved plans and schedules, and attacked this new quirk with the same dedication she gave to all her school assignments, dance lessons, vocal lessons, etc. After all, there was no telling what effect (if any) this could have on her future as a Broadway star. The psychology section of Lima's library had lead to the bigger collections in Columbus and Toledo, and she'd even browsed through the stacks in Cincinnati a time or twenty. She found that while her _condition_ was rather obscure, it was also rather different.

Most of the recorded cases, when not revealed to have been hoaxes, were rather _vague_, for lack of a better term. For one, it was apparently a total body invasion. An entire consciousness, that the host usually had no idea was even there. No recollection of any actions of the alternate personality either. More like a dream-state than anything else.

Rachel concluded in highschool that she was always going to be that **else**. The exception to just about every rule of Disassociative Identity Disorder.

She _knew_ her alters; had since she (and _they_) were kids. Their names, their faces. They grew up with her, but they also _grew up with her_, if that made any sense. She knew Puck was eight, that first Thursday at the park. And while she didn't always remember all of what they did once they took over her body and her consciousness, she could ask and they would elaborate. In vulgar detail if she caught Puck post-conquest.

Yet, for some reason she had never shared **that** part of her situation with anyone else. It would only do one of two things, she'd reasoned back in middle-school, when she figured it all out in preparation of surviving highschool, and the pitfalls of being popular. She would be treated as an insane person, who made up unbelievable lies to gain friends, and belonged in a nuthouse. Or she would be an even bigger freakshow than _the girl with two gay dads_, open to constant ridicule and humiliation by her peers. Silence, she'd decided, was better. Let's not give them any more to judge.

"His name is Noah Puckerman," Santana was saying when Rachel opened her eyes. She was holding up her cellphone, waiting for Rachel's acknowledgement.

"Actually, it's Noah _Elijah_ Puckerman," she corrected automatically. She blinked once, then leaned in to get a better look at the piccture on Santana's phone. On-screen, a michievous looking guy, sporting an honest-to-goodness mohawk, had his arms around who she knew was Lauren Zizes, Santana's psychotic best friend.

Santana kept quiet, watching as Rachel studied the onscreen image intently. Puck had only stayed for ten minutes, if that; and while Santana always felt a little on edge whenever Rachel returned after being _away_, somehow this time that familiar tension was different. Like brace-yourself-because-something-weird-is-gonna-ha ppen different.

"He calls himself Puck, too," Santana eventually said. She was watching her roommate's reactions carefully, unsure how Rachel would take the news. She didn't even fully _believe_ in the alters' existence half the time, and she'd known Rachel since highschool, but this was something else. Shit just got **real**.

Sure, Santana knew stuff about these other personalities Rachel whipped out. Things like how Puck and Sam played the guitar while Finn prefered the drums (as proven by those instruments having places of honour in the tiny study that Rachel commandeered when they moved in). And Rachel's fathers were the ones who had paid for their music lessons. But she also knew that **Rachel** couldn't play either instrument to save her life, and not for a lack of trying. But that was just in an abstract kinda way, like knowing the earth was round. It didn't require proof; like real in-your-face in front of your very eyes **proof**.

This Puck-thing though?

Deep down, Santana **knew** that this boy, Lauren's Noah Puckerman was _Rachel's_ Puck. Was one of her alternate personalities in the actual flesh. She just didn't know how. And holy shit if he was real -was out there in the world- did that mean the rest were out there too?

Rachel was still unable to look away from her alter-ego and his new girlfriend, smiling at her from Santana's iPhone. She was lightly biting her bottom lip, evidently deep in thought. Then she took a deep breath, before finally looking Santana right in the eye.

"I don't know what this means," she began quietly. "I don't know how to explain it either, but I'll try. I'll tell you everything I know about... them. Okay?"

Rachel could feel herself on the verge of crying, but she didn't let the tears fall. She couldn't reveal the extent of her association with the voices in her head before. Couldn't tell anyone about how she even sometimes dreamed as her alters. After fruitless explanations and demands of _How is that even possible?_ it had ended up being one more thing she just didn't talk about or acknowledge aloud, at all.

How can you play the guitar one minute, and not the next? How can you reach the top shelf one day, and need the step-stool every other day? Her knowledge of Super Mario Kart and Call of Duty would waver from one weekend to the next. She was vegan but her alters weren't. And so on, and on and on.

In the end, everything _different and inexplicable_ was lumped in with all the things Rachel's fathers and her friends and her psychiatrists and her roommate had never known about her **condition**. Because Rachel had prefered it that way, at the time. Nobody else could understand **it**, since nobody else was in her position. And the silence kept anyone from trying.

But maybe, it was time for her silence to be broken. If only she knew where to start.

"Do you think..." Rachel trailed off uncertainly.

"What? You wanna meet him or somethin'?" The Latina retorted lightly. No, she didn't think that's what Rachel was gonna suggest, but it was the only thing she could come up with to cut the heavy tension a little. Her tone clearly indicated that **that **notion would be just plain crazy. She might not do feelings if she could help it, and really, after the revelations between her and Rachel, she kinda just wanted to get super drunk, pass out, and wake up in the morning like nothing's changed; but she would try to be there for her friend.

Even if she decided a face-to-face meeting is exactly what she wanted after all.

"No!" Rachel was staring at Santana in confusion and horror. "No, I don't want to meet him!" She seemed almost offended at the suggestion, and Santana only shrugged in response. "That would be sheer lunacy, and while I am many things, Santana Maria Lopez," Rachel bit out, "I am **not** insane."

Frankly, Santana thought that was debatable, but whatever. "Then what? What were you gonna say?" she asked, folding her arms and pursing her lips. She absolutely hated it when Rachel whipped out her middle name like that, and the diva knew it.

"Well?" she gestured impatiently when her roommate didn't answer.

Rachel fixed her with a withering stare, before exhaling loudly. "What I was going to say, Santana, before you so rudely interrupted me," she frowned at seeing the other girl roll her eyes in exasperation. Shaking off the juvenile behaviour, she asked, "Do you think the others could be real people too?"

_Crap_, Santana internally face-palmed. _Of fucking course! _"We are **so** screwed."


	3. 3 And then

**3. And then there were two, or three, or...**

Rachel first 'met' Finn Hudson when she started her sophomore year in highschool. William McKinley High was a whole new world for the girl, and freshman year had been mostly finding her bearings and blending into the scenery. But then in the new school year, graduating senior Hank Saunders accused the campy music teacher of _inappropriate touching_, and the next thing anyone knew, the school's glee-club was disbanded. Luckily, Spanish teacher Mr Will Schuester was on hand to relive his glory days of yore, and soon the New Directions were born.

Goth-chick Tina Cohen-Chang, wheelchair-bound Artie Abrams, and the soulful diva Mercedes Jones, with none other than Rachel Barbra Berry as its **star**.

Puck was fairly confident of his guitar-playing (_axel-shredding_, as he called it) ability by then, and Rachel could sing circles around everyone else without even really trying, and things just seemed to fall into place. Until Mr Schue took the four of them to see a _real show choir_ perform.

Vocal Adrenaline was impressive, to say the least. And the seamless precision of their lead vocallists Jesse St. James and Andrea Cohen, were like powerful cogs in a well-oiled machine. They practically sealed rachel's fate.

Let it never be said Will Schuester didn't know how to play dirty.

The very next meeting of the glee-club was dedicated to finding their own powerhouse duo, and unfortunately for Rachel, that meant facing her worst nightmare: cheerleaders. Head Bitch Santana Lopez and her side-kick Brittany Pierce wormed their way in, despite vehement protests from their bullied victims. Dragged in behind them like so much forgotten luggage were their respective boyfriends; the strangely silent pair of Mike Chang and Matt Rutherford. But while the football-jocks could dance, they were still lacking in the voice department, which had Schuester canvassing for a male lead.

He met Kurt Hummel. And Rachel met Finn.

Finn wasn't particularly smart, or particularly ambitious, and sometimes he could be a huge jerk, but generally speaking he was a nice guy. He loved music, and played the drums, and he had a decent singing voice that only needed a little more training. He was also the tallest boy their age Rachel had ever 'seen'. He was earnest, wanting to be a good person and a leader, but his perpetual quest for popularity meant he unintentionally hurt his friends' feelings, a lot.

Unfortunately, he wasn't (corpo)real, except in Rachel's mind.

Which meant Rachel was the one having to apologise for calling Kurt's bedroom decorations faggy, and pushing Artie's wheelchair so hard the boy nearly rolled off-stage. Rachel was the one getting slushied and dumpster-tossed for calling Brittany stupid to her face. And for flirting with Santana, although that might actually have been because of Puck, too.

It also meant Rachel was the one getting sacked on the football field. She still didn't know how Finn managed to convince Coach Tanaka to give her little hands and spindly arms the quarterback spot on McKinley's Titans. She supposed once you had a kicker that danced the Single Ladies dance before he scored the game's winning points, no other suggestions were without merit.

It also meant she ended up losing her virginity to Satan herself.

That had been a fun week; not. Puck had been beside himself with rage, and if the boys had been real, Rachel knew fists would have been flying. And for all his physical stature, Finn would have lost that particular fight. It was Brittany, sweet gullible naive Brittany who came to Rachel's (and Finn's) rescue. Rachel thought that if her and Noah Puckerman ever met face-to-face, their cat-that-got-thecanary-and-the-cream smirks would be perfectly identical.

Santana eventually found him in Georgia. According to his facebook profile, Finn Hudson was enjoying the Army's bootcamp at Fort Benning, and 'learning a whole lot of awesome stuff.' He looked exactly how Rachel knew he would.

"Wow," Santana muttered lowly, "that is one tall motherfucker."

He had a fiancee, Harmony Drew, who would be studying at New York's Tisch School of the Arts as soon as she graduates, and a step-brother called Sebastian Smythe, who wanted to take over the world, one closeted-gay-boy at a time. He was the quarterback and captain of his highschool's football team, and the drummer of their jazz band.

"This is surreal," Santana said softly, happily rifling through the various photo albums littering Finn's facebook page. "Look at all this," she continued. "Even the same taste in clothes!"

But Rachel wasn't really paying attention anymore. She had much bigger things to worry about, like the fact that whoever Finn Hudson was, he knew Noah Puckerman. And someone else she was intimately acquainted with. Her hope that Santana wouldn't see it too went up in smoke when the Latina breathed out an astonished "Ay dios mio" from her spot next to Rachel.

After realizing that her brain couldn't actually process the possibility of Rachel's alters all existing in the real world (at least not without blasting right out of her skull) Santana had raced to find her laptop. The two girls had decided to return to Rachel's room, since her bed had the softer surface. You know, just in case fainting became an issue.

"Did you see this?" she asked, pointing at the group-shot that had already caught Rachel's eye. Santana didn't wait for an answer, enlarging the photo in order to confirm her suspicions, and incidentally (unknowingly) Rachel's sudden fear.

There, with arms casually slung over broad shoulders and sharing cheesy smiles, were Finn Hudson, Noah Puckerman, and a blonde boy that Rachel recognised instantly. Santana ignored her shocked gasp in favour of reading the caption, missing the other girl shaking her head in disbelief.

"Best buds and bro's forever: Captain Finn, Puckasaurus Rex, and Sam I Am," she said. "Holy _fuck_." Santana blinked owlishly at her laptop's screen, but the image, and its accompanying description didn't change. "Rach, I think I'm having a stroke right now."

She finally turned to face her roommate and best friend. "This is **not** happening," she husked, wiping her wet cheeks. When did she start to cry? Still, her eyes desperately searched the chocolate ones in front of her for answers, an explanation, anything to negate the truth forcing the breath from her lungs.

"Oh God, Rachel," Santana choked out, throat impossibly dry. "What does this mean? What the **fuck** does this mean?"

Rachel didn't know, couldn't even begin to figure it out. One thing was clear, though. Silence could no longer be an option for her anymore. All those things about her alters she'd refused to acknowledge before, would have to be brought into the light. Hopefully, answers to Santana's questions would be revealed as well.


End file.
